Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Mycroft seems to be the one that crops up.
https://mycroft.ai/

We have an alexa thing that is really only used for voice controlling the lighting state in the living room - is there an alternative voice controller to use that is less morally reprehensible?

That is the question asked in the link above.

The answer seems to be "not really"... but of the choices you have, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google's OK Google... the ranking seems to be that Amazon is the worst in every way and wipes out privacy within the home even from family members (allowing a remote family member to listen in is abhorrent).

Siri and Apple Home stuff I don't really know about.

Google fear a privacy existential threat so aren't taking risks in this space, but they don't have the breadth of integrations either.

Least worst is either Apple or Google for the big places.

Most worst (by quite a margin) is Amazon Alexa.

Webthings formerly of Mozilla has a voice assistant by all accounts.

I use mine with rules and the webinterface so can't comment on its function.

Can't imagine the market crossover is large. At least their silly record playing add shows someone sitting in a house being warm. The bike advert makes no sense to me on pretty much any level. Is it a hipster work from home thing?

Via the rage-generated heat when your top tube crimps, because you decided not to clamp the seatpost?

That's one of my favourite Conan Doyle books:

Mycroft and the Endless Wait for Production Ready Versions of the Mark II
(A Tale of an Attractive Small Form Smart Assistant that Now Looks Like a Toaster TV)

Current thinking on Video Doorbells?

Been having a bit of hassle in the neighbourhood recently with theft from vehicles and 'carol singers' scoping out properties.

I'm looking at the Nest Battery version (annoying as you can't direct video to my own server) but it'll play well with all the other Google Home stuff.

Any reason not to or is there other stuff that works with Google/Nest/Smarthings?

Google one is good. Weird is better than battery but battery is good.

They all require a subscription to be useful with better retention of video, higher quality and better features for detection zones, etc.

It's only going to see whatever is in front of the house, but that's obvious right

I would go with Eufy.

No subscription required with the hub it comes with. All local storage. Most importantly it’s not owned by a company who sells personal data for a living…

Really pleased with ours.

Apparently we both might get some cash back / cash off if you use my referral:

https://share-eu.eufylife.com/v1/shopping/s/g/MMWtGsHwg

Coming back to this... Every video doorbell needs a subscription for the video to be hosted off-site.

Which? has Ring and Arlo as best buy.

Nest comes behind that.

Then Eufy.

The don't buys were Swann and homeguard... Both of which I'd not heard of.

I personally wouldn't touch Amazon smart home stuff. I'm not sure what Arlo is 🤷

Apple HomeKit bells store in iCloud for ten days if you subscribe to any of the upgraded iCloud storage options. The video doesn’t count against your storage allowance but the number of cameras/bells you can have is directly tied to how much storage you are subscribed to.

Watch out for putting ring doorbells in direct sunlight, ours is about 4 years old on a south facing wall and the plastic that covers the lens has cracks all over it giving shit image quality. It’s going in the bin once I decide on a HomeKit compatible replacement.

This is why I am selling this and going all in on HomeKit...
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/371055/#comment16317077

Probably going for Nest as it works with Google correctly.

The Eufy looks nice as it's made by Anker and their batteries and speakers are really good but the reviews say they don't integrate completely with Google Home.

Yeah. Not going to do Amazon, even if I have Prime, but they seem really shitty on security.

Don't really want another hub to add (have Smarthings and Phillips Hue already) to the existing ones. And would look at adding another camera for the back garden entrance in the future.

The Nest one can get upgraded to mains wiring in the future when I rewire the house.

And a fiver a month for cloud storage? Not so bad I guess.

I'll see what the January sales come up with.

Netatmo was the one I came to when I did my research previously but I never got round to going further than that.

Main reasons were it's a reputable brand and it's got inbuilt options to allow you to write files to an FTP server (or Dropbox if that floats your boat).

Netatmo

I've seen some of the Legrand Smart Systems but it is very 'Pro' and seems to rely on that you use their DIN Rail Distribution Boards.

Great idea if you are designing a house from scratch but not for me at the present time.

Mate of mine bought a Swann system from Costco UK. He installed it for peace of mind when working away from home. One extended, (3 week?), business trip I had to go to his replace and reset the system as it had 'seized up'.

I googled all of them... and the one that surprised me the most was Arlo. Looks like a solid product.

I too would choose Nest - if you're deep into a system the benefits from sticking with it are there. The Google Home integration isn't as deep as you imagine though, yes I can view and manage things in the Home app but it pushes me back to the Nest app often enough. I'd still choose it though... I simply trust Google with software updates, and the quality of the software and I believe software defines most of the value of these things.

But... if I weren't so deeply into Google, I'd choose the Arlo.

Netatmo is the consumer part of it.

I have one of their thermostats that was a piece of piss to install.

Thanks, both, I'll do some more investigating.

A unifying system to link all your 'things' together? Interesting.

competing standards.xkcd

I mean, that's basically home assistant. It just depends on whether configuration is easy and how much is supported.

Not sure if this is the best thread for this, but any folks here have any thoughts/experience on home NAS options? Torn between an OTP option or the DIY Raspberry Pi option.

Got most of the bits for the Pi option (still need to look into a UPS to deal with power-cuts), but being limited to 256GB (well, due to only having 4 x 128GB flash drives to hand, larger storage ones aren't too pricey). Also, fairly sure the Pi has 2 x USB2 & 2 USB3 ports, not sure if that's another pain to deal with. Would also be nice to have remote access, not something I've done before and seems like a way to inadvertently allow nefarious types access to your home network. Also guessing flash drives are quicker to wear out compared with HDDs in a NAS system.

Flip side is an OTP option that costs around £3-400 and has a much higher storage capacity. I'm guessing with these sorts of things you work out what storage capacity you need, only to bung a whole heap of stuff onto it due to the convenience and end up needing several times more than what you first estimated.

Two OTP options I'm looking at are:
https://www.westerndigital.com/en-ie/products/network-attached-storage/wd-my-cloud-expert-series-ex2-ultra#WDBVBZ0080JCH-EESN
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS220j

Both work out around £3-400 for 8TB (4TB with redundancy) options.

Be interested to hear if any folks here have any experience of either/both DIY/OTP options and any thoughts.

I guess as an aside, does picking one of these up lead you down the redundancy rabbit-hole that you have a mirrored setup off-site in case of a fire or similar?

an OTP option or the DIY Raspberry Pi option

I'm about to lose all of my Pi setups for (mini) NAS, home assistant, pihole etc...

They just aren't stable enough - my guess (and it is just a wild guess) is because of power problems.

UPS would be fairly straight forward, no? Just plug a USB battery pack in series.

redundancy rabbit-hole

I have an OTP NAS that is mirrored to WD MyCloud (terrible interface, terrible NAS OS, but does the basics), which is in turn synced to locally to a desktop and then to my own S3 VPS.

[Edit] just looked at your links. I have the MyCloud EX2 Ultra.

Don't get it.

As I mentioned - it does the basics, but it's a very locked down OS / virtual container, and i've had to do some fragile af fuckery on it to make it work as I would like (e.g. having seamless integration with my desktop over ssh).